The Black Mesa Website now offers a timer, counting down to a September 14th release of this modification that will update the gameplay from Half-Life with the Source engine from Half-Life 2. This project has taken more development time than the gap between the first two Half-Life games, which earned it "vaporware awards" from the impatient pundits at Wired in 2009 and 2010, but it seems this long wait is about to come to an end. Here's word from the forums:

We're freaking out over here! It is so exciting to share this news with you!

You can now Download the Black Mesa Soundtrack, courtesy of our very own Joel Nielsen, at the very generous price of whatever you want! Enjoy and share!

In the near future you'll see our Website, Wiki and Forums all taken down temporarily for renovations.

On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa! This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible.

We are still working hard on Xen and BMDM, but instead of making you wait we are giving you Black Mesa as soon as it's ready! We're doing our best to help bring the immense vision of this project into reality, and we are very excited for what the future brings!

Mad Max RW wrote on Sep 3, 2012, 09:35:Completely remaking every asset, level, sound, model, texture, etc. of the game is "small scale"? With no team and undocumented tools. What have you done? Besides living vicariously through the Black Mesa thread on the Steam forums.

Ah, Max my friend, again, you talk garbage. Until today, I've not posted on the Black Mesa thread in many, many months. Not exactly living vicariously, now is it?

What have I done? Mod wise? Nothing. Well, not quite true. I made a couple of Doom levels back in the 90s (they stank, man, were they bad!) and using screen shots before it was released, ported some of the Dark Forces weapons into Doom. Pretty bad too.

Other than that? I've been a software engineer, programmer, and for the past 6 years, a Sys Admin. So? I don't go around criticising other software engineers, programmers or sys admins needlessly and in the most arrogant, trolling kind of way.

Criticise the BM:S team all you want (and you will), but the average poster/reader here will see you for what you are - someone who values their opinion very highly, and everyone else be damned.